From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall

Settling Down

When I returned from concerts in South America in 1953,1 began taking stock of my situation. I had been in the United States three years, and was, as they say,getting by. The pay wasn't bad for those days, but not great—about two hundred dollars for a performance.I began to tell myself that I had to start making a real living. Since everybody seemed to be teaching at that time—Rudolf Serkin was teaching, this one and that one was teaching, many of the big names of the day—I began to think about finding a teaching position . And I found it in September 1953 when the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia offered me a job as the head of its piano department. The Curtis Music Institute was an outgrowth of the Settlement Music School. It was a wonderful position, and I loved it. I taught piano to the most eager, talented young boys and girls I could ever have hoped for, ages ten to seventeen. The school had never had any of its students win the Philadelphia Orchestra's Youth Contest, and during my first year there we had our first winner. All in all, about ten 195 setting Douwn 196 New World of my students went on to play with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The board jumped for joy when two of them, Charles Birenbaum, playing the Chopin E Minor Concerto, and Beth Levine, performing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, beat out Curtis Music Institute students in the Philadelphia Orchestra competition. One of my most interesting students at the Settlement Music School was Marcia, who came to me when she was about eleven years old. When she arrived with her mother for the audition, her mother wascarrying a piano music stand. When I asked her what it was for, she said, "We clip it onto the piano stand because Marcia doesn't see too well." She had been born prematurely, and when they put her in an incubator, they gave her too much oxygen. As a result, she was blind in one eye and had only about 20 percent vision in the other. She sat at the piano with her little belly almost on the keyboard and her nose in the music. All she could do then was bang the keys. I thought, "Oh boy, what do I do now?" I decided to test her eyes, so I stood back and said, "Marcia, how many fingers do you see?" She said, "Three." I said, "Very good." I had held up two. She couldn't see worth beans. And yet she wasso burning with desire to play the piano, I never saw anything like it. Her eagerness was contagious. I'll never forget it. I tested her ear, and she had perfect pitch. So there was something there all right. I thought for a minute and then said, "Look, I don't have an opening right now." It wasDecember before the holidays. "But at Christmas, I have somebody leaving for California, so I'll have one opening. I'll take you for four weeks as an experiment. And I have some ideas. If they work, you can play the piano. Otherwise, give it up. Youcan't play the wayyou're playingnow. For the next couple weeksjust play softly and from memory." I added, "You know, Marcia, when God takes away one of the senses from a human being, He usually gives back more somewhere else, so I'm hoping you have a wonderful memory. If you have, we'll be able to do something together." And as it turned out, her memory was fantastic. When she came back for her first lesson, I said, "Marcia, from Settling Doum 197 now on, you are going to sit like I sit, and hold your hands on the piano like everybody else. And when you come back next week, I want you to have learned from memory what I am going to giveyou. You will never have music again on the stand. Forget it. You'll learn your music on the sofa. You'll memorize it, and you'll hear it in your head." "But how can I do that? It's impossible!" "Not so fast. Youlive in an apartment or a house, right?Youhave your own room? Can you describe it? Where's the window when you go in the door?" "Straight ahead." "Where's the...